Share!I will be traveling from March 29 through April 6. New material will be posted intermittently. Please check back regularly for new posts, both free, and Professional Edition. To all who will be observing the holidays, all the best! Thanks for your support. – Lee Share!

Share!Net new Treasury supply will be extremely light for the balance of the second quarter and the ECB and BoJ are pumping cash like mad into the accounts of bond trading firms. What are they going to do with it? Share!

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Federal Government Garnishes Social Security Checks To Repay Student Loans

Why are America’s big universities getting bigger and bigger, richer and richer, while those trying to pay for the overpriced, often worthless degree they grant, end up in the poorhouse, or worse, Uncle Sam’s shithouse?

The corruption and greed in the US higher education system is a national disgrace. The system is set up to enrich the institutions and the plutocrats who run them–not to mention the coddled, over privileged and under-worked professional academic class that sucks at their teats while ripping off their customer “students” and their families.

It’s no secret that falling behind on student loan payments can squash a borrower’s hopes of building savings, buying a home or even finding work. Now, thousands of retirees are learning that defaulting on student-debt can threaten something that used to be untouchable: their Social Security benefits.

According to government data, compiled by the Treasury Department at the request of SmartMoney.com, the federal government is withholding money from a rapidly growing number of Social Security recipients who have fallen behind on federal student loans. From January through August 6, the government reduced the size of roughly 115,000 retirees’ Social Security checks on those grounds. That’s nearly double the pace of the department’s enforcement in 2011; it’s up from around 60,000 cases in all of 2007 and just 6 cases in 2000.

The amount that the government withholds varies widely, though it runs up to 15%. Assuming the average monthly Social Security benefit for a retired worker of $1,234, that could mean a monthly haircut of almost $190.